Dual P3 vs P4 for Video Editing

[Achaelus]

Hello All,

I'm soon going to be in the market for a whole new pc. I've read numerous posts and determined that for the video editing I want to do I'll need to go P4 at least 2.6 G with min of 512 of pc3200 ram.

However, I was thinking, would it make sense to go with a duel p3 system? If the p3's were say 1.5 g or something, with the same amount of ram, would this be a better option than the 1 p4?

Any thoughts/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

[Stringent]

I think the one P4 would be better as the dual PIII boards aren't all that. I have one, with 2 1ghz and 1GB RAM. Its smooth, but I doubt you would notice the difference.

[Swafe]

p3 pwn p4, p4 just get high clocks and poor yields

if you were to get a dual 1.4 and clock it to say 1.6 - so youd have 3.2 ghz on your hands, it would only effectivly run at 2.6 or so ghz but id guess it would kick a 2.6 p4s butt, but its pretty expensive for a dually board

[TooNice]

Umm, the P3 may be more efficient than the P4 clock per clock..
But video editing is an area the P4 excels at if I am not mistaken.

Personally, I'd go P4.. You also get to use faster memory which is beneficial for the task as well.

[Agent]

Indeed. For this application, the P4 would win.

[TiG]

I agree, the p4 may have a long pipeline but its well configured for video editing and encoding.

TiG

[sparky191]

Well if the app was completely optimised for dual cpus and you were running a multi cpu OS then I still reckon the P4 would be a lot faster. Theres a 1Ghz in ther difference and that massive! Multi CPU rigs really only excel in very specific tasks. Look at any benchmarks for a Dual G5/P4/Dual AMD rig and you'd see the P4 does very well in a lot of areas.

[Bindibadgi]

Trust me dual p3 systems are SLOW AS ANYTHIN.

I had a dual 1.2 system with a gig of ECC sdram this time last year and OMG it was SOOOO SLOW compared to my 512meg DDR and 2.4 P4.

Defo go for P4 if yo can, Xeons are pretty good and should be uber stable with an intel chipset. SEE2 is good for video encoding n all.

Yes, they have a longer pipeline and need higher clock speeds but they are still decent chips.

If you can afford it though go dual Opteron although you loose AGP. Or you mebbe able to find a dual AMD board still.

[joshwa]

The Hyper-Threading thing with the new P4s might also be good for it, but I'm just guessing.

The memory bandwidth of the P4 should definitely help as well, because this is massively faster than a P3 system's memory bandwidth.

[Bindibadgi]

Originally posted by www.josh.org.uk
The Hyper-Threading thing with the new P4s might also be good for it, but I'm just guessing.

The memory bandwidth of the P4 should definitely help as well, because this is massively faster than a P3 system's memory bandwidth.

Ive found HT is a tad screwy in windows. It helps for sure - smooths stuff out very nicely in XP Pro, but when it comes to encoding windows reads it as only using 30-50% cpu when i want it to max it out.

I think mebbe i might run some tests of HT enabled/disabled when encoding if i can be arsed.

Problem with Xeons is the mem bandwidth is used by BOTH cpus not each has their own, unlike opterons which have independent mem controllers.

[[GSV]Trig]

Originally posted by Bindibadgi
but when it comes to encoding windows reads it as only using 30-50% cpu when i want it to max it out.

Do you?
Surely the sign of a good system is one that doesnt max out?

[Achaelus]

Ok,

So the 1 P4 is the way to go it seems. Thanks for all the input. For the video editing, does anyone have any thoughts on the vid card to use? I was looking into the All-in-Wonder 9600 pro, this seems to be one of the best. Has anyone used it specifically for editing and how did it do?

In regards to the cpu, would the 2.6 be sufficient iyo? Anyone that has built recently to do what I'm proposing, would you post what you put in (case, mobo, vid card, watts, cooler, # fans etc). I'm not planning on buildling often, so I need to make sure I get the best bang for my buck.

Thanks again!

[chrisf6969]

a 2.6C (800FBS + HT) Overclocked to 3.2-3.3+ should be nice

[TiG]

Originally posted by [GSV]Trig
Do you?
Surely the sign of a good system is one that doesnt max out?

Nope - Say you've got 1000 operations to do, its most efficent to do them at 100 operation a second and max out the CPU for 10 seconds.

The reason for this say 5 seconds through you get another 1000 operations and you are only running at 50% efficency, you then start having to delay stuff.

SQL server runs on this principle, a good database will peak to 100% for milliseconds (seconds if large queries) and sit at like 1% at all other times.

TiG

[Bindibadgi]

I was encoding xvid at 130fps though, then i tried divx and got 30-40fps!? and surfing the net at the same time, but net surfing doesnt exactly take up 60% cpu.